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"Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together."
- Ray Bradbury
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| Gravitation Screen | ||
| Shields a spacecraft from the gravity of a planetary body. |
Very early use of this idea.
| The great black hull of the Columbia, with her white-haired captain up forward at his post; and the pitiful unfortunates swarming her decks; the sudden obliteration of the scene as the shutters closed over it was indelibly imprinted on his imagination. There was a turning and grinding of the great motors at the rear of the cradle as they worked the gravitation screens under the vessel, one from the front and one from the rear; then, as the earth's attraction reluctantly gave up its grip on the mighty mass of iron and steel gouged from her own vitals, it slowly rose, level keeled, until its stern butted against the top girders of the cradle. |
| Technovelgy from On The Martian Way,
by Harry Gore Bishop. Published by The Broadway Magazine in 1907 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the more personal gravity web from Frank Herbert's 1969 novel Whipping Star, as well as cavorite from the 1901 novel The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells, the gravity-neutralizing disks from Edmond Hamilton's 1937 short story Fessenden's Worlds and the sleeping plates from Larry Niven's 1966 novella Neutron Star.
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Tech news articles related to works by Harry Gore Bishop
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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
